Woman, you don't know an f-hole from the k-hole! I demand a correction!

No, you're partly right.

[geek]
I'd peg that as a '65 Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean with Hi-Lo 'Tron pickups and a Bigsby tailpiece. That model was only 2 inches thick and so featured "simulated inlaid 'F' holes." Catalog No. PX6119.
[/geek]
saint kansas | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 6:29 am | #

Dawn: My fave-rave photos are of Brit mod bands posing in front of postwar buildings: The Small Faces, The Who, The Yardbirds, Herman's Hermits, et al. And here we have a live action version of that!

It's a sign of optimism, these bands and buildings growing out of the rubble of WWII.

Saint Kansas: The Gretsch was a thinline, but so are my Ric 330s and my 1972-style Tele, and their sound holes are not merely decorative.

That said, it's always nice to meet another guitar geek! Lately I've been playing my metallic red Wilson Bros. VM-65!
J. D. King | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 7:31 am | #

Not to mention that if you judged solely by this clip, you might think that the 4+2 was a five-piece band, a bit of creative accounting that would reign unsurpassed until the arrival of the Thompson Twins.
CGHill | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 8:19 am | #

Dawn: My fave-rave photos are of Brit mod bands posing in front of postwar buildings: The Small Faces, The Who, The Yardbirds, Herman's Hermits, et al.

LOL! Hadn't realized it was a whole photo genre at that time. Don't forget the cover of the Rockin' Berries' In Town!

CGHill, aren't you forgetting the lone shot of the blond drummer at the very beginning? He's the Dennis Wilson of the group.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 8:49 am | #

Good stuff! From same era: You've Got Your Troubles by the Fortunes.
C.J. | 01.26.07 - 8:55 am | #

Gotta ask Dawn, are you familiar with the Shadows and/or Cliff Richards?
Scott W. | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 8:57 am | #

"My fave rave photos are of Brit mod bands posing in front of postwar buildings."

That kind of thing is all over the Absolute Beginners movie from the 1980s.

www.forgotten-ny.com
Kevin Walsh | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 9:17 am | #

I wish I had my old 1956 Gibson f-hole. It was a gorgeous, yellow-gold jazz guitar, and I let it go so I could by a top of the line Ovation acoustic-electric which is just icky to me now.

I hate the Ovation, and if my kid or one of his friends plays "Free Bird" on it one more time it's out of here.
Geoff | 01.26.07 - 9:40 am | #

I feel your pain. My kid plays Stairway to Heaven. Aaaaargh!

But at least he'll occasionally redeem himself with the intro to Day Tripper.
C.J. | 01.26.07 - 10:06 am | #

PS: Dawn, I'd almost say it's a genre in my mind, but it's mind set I seem to share w/The Jam. Witness their "This is the Modern World" LP/CD cover! :)

Also, I like the flip side -- as it were, so to speak, if you will -- of this little genre: Brit mod bands posing w/buildings of antiquity.

Carry on, luv! Carry on!
J.D. King | 01.26.07 - 10:35 am | #

What a delightful way to start the morning!
The Digital Hairshirt | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 11:01 am | #

Thanks, Dawn. Such a great song. I remember how odd it seemed--such a different sound from everything else at the time, and it kind of came out of nowhere. (Pardon me while I go into a nostalgic trance, remembering the circumstances under which I first heard the song, and how the lives of the people present worked out...)

I always thought that solo was played on an acoustic.
Maclin Horton | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 11:16 am | #

But the mere fact that they tossed him in there almost as an afterthought makes you, or at least me, wonder.

Besides, I seem to recall that at one time there were seven members of the band.
CGHill | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 11:44 am | #

My 15 month old son started dancing when he heard it and then when it was over did sign language for more! Very nice!
ann | 01.26.07 - 1:56 pm | #

This song was new to me; the closest thing in the family cassette crypt is "Pelican West" by Haircut One Hundred.

For the ultimate post-modern take on the band-in-a-construction site and/or quarry genre, check out the Pixies' Velouria.
saint kansas | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 3:12 pm | #

Maclin, I thought the same thing - the solo doesn't seem it could be produced by that particular guitar but it is. It sounds like the song was recorded using that guitar unplugged, and mic'd from the front?

C.J. glad to know I'm not the only one.
Geoff | 01.26.07 - 3:56 pm | #

Absolutely fab lead in with concrete and clay ... early mu-vid effort (obviously influence The Monkees mock-TV efforts.

Best/blessings from the 3Ms to our fav heartthrob. What ho!
Athos | 01.26.07 - 10:34 pm | #

I've loved this tune since I heard it in Rushmore.
JV | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 10:56 pm | #

One of the things that always strikes me about the Early Baby Boomers (the ones born between 1945-55) is that, no matter how badly some of their "choices" turned out, most of them still retain the romantic optimism and world-well-lost-for-love attitude that was so characteristic of that age cohort.

I suppose the difference between them and *us* - people born after the cataclysm - is that although they helped to create the sexual revolution (they weren't solely responsible, of course), they didn't grow up in the midst of it, or, worse yet, after it had done its damage. Their parents stayed together; their childhoods, even when threatened by poverty or alcoholism in their immediate families, tended to be more stable.

Allan Bloom has some passages on the effect of divorce on romantic expectations - especially the capacity for experiencing the sublime (and how this in turn affects the capacity for learning) - in The Closing of the American Mind.
alias clio | 01.27.07 - 12:12 pm | #

post-script: I meant to add, to my comment above, that this is the kind of romantic optimism you can still hear, in love songs like this one, until around the middle of the 1970s. Then a new generation of song-writers took over.
alias clio | 01.27.07 - 12:14 pm | #

Speaking as a sex-positive guitarist, I find that Gretsch mad sexy.
saint kansas | Homepage | 01.27.07 - 3:01 pm | #

saint kansas, speaking as a complete guitar slut, I envy your sex-positive guitar attitude, as I squandered my youth on too many strange fretboards, too many dove joints; and yes, I've had a Gretsch and I'm ashamed to say I can't even remember what it sounded like but I'm pretty sure it was green.
Geoff | 01.27.07 - 6:33 pm | #

Another band I had forgotten about. I hope someone is getting rebates from Amazon.
Pat Patterson | 01.27.07 - 9:34 pm | #

Great song - sounds vaguely familiar, and I found it on iTunes!

About the guitar: even the Gretsch Country Gents had fake f-holes (see George Harrison's) but my '68 Gretsch Ralley has real f-holes, even though it is also a thin full-hollow body.

I wondered about the sound on that guitar solo; I thought perhaps he had the mute on (some models had a built-in mute pad).
Andy | Homepage | 01.29.07 - 2:15 pm | #